Dancing in the war-torn Middle East, being chased through the streets of Dublin by police and touring Russian hospitals after drunkenly tumbling down a staircase: Babylon Circus frontman David Baruchel certainly lives up to his French punk-fusion band’s decadent carnival name.

Baruchel promises also to evoke it on stage with the band’s raucous sonic fusion of punk rock, reggae, French folk and gypsy influences — equal parts whimsy and energy.

The stage is our playground, the world is our stage, Baruchel says. On the album, we do it almost whispering in the ears of the audience … so you can listen to it under the shower, or in your car, or at a party. But when we are back on stage, if we were a real circus, we would be lions or electrical clowns.

Brisbane audiences will get to experience this mayhem first-hand when Babylon Circus perform next Thursday, after a slot on Womadelaide bill lured them to Australia.

It’s really powerful … we need to scream, we need to jump and we need to have this relationship with the audience, Baruchel says.

Babylon Circus continue to broaden their musical horizons with their latest album, La Belle Etoile, moving from punk and reggae roots to an amazing assortment of sounds. Their previous album, Dances of Resistance, had a journalistic feel, inspired by travels that showed a side of life not widely reported in Western media.

They were the only European band to accept an invitation to play at La Fete de la Musique in Damascus, three months after the US invasion of Iraq.

Within minutes they were joined by 200 people, some of whom shut their shops to dance in the streets.

In Dublin, they were illegally offered potato vodka to drink in public, resulting in a confused musician being chased through the streets by the police, who were in turn were pursued by the rest of the band members. La Belle Etoile was also influenced by an accident in which Baruchel fractured his skull and nearly died when he drunkenly tumbled down a staircase after a gig in Moscow.

Baruchel spent the next 12 days in five different Russian hospitals and had an even longer road to recovery.

Patrick McDonald, The Courier Mail